Toronto Takes Home Five Wins at the Indie Series Awards

April 3, 2014

On April 2, 2014 the 5th Annual Indie Series Awards (ISA5) had a red carpet ceremony at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. The show was televised on JTS.tv, but for those who don’t have a subscription here’s the lowdown. This year a record 56 web series were nominated, and a final count of 26 awards were given out. Categories accommodated the comedy and drama shows, and included technical awards of make-up, editing, and score.

This year Toronto web series won a total of five out of that final number. First off, the second season of Clutch took home two awards. Jonathan Robbins, the show’s creator, won Best Director in Drama, and Jillian Clare won Best Supporting Actress. Simon Fraser and Mike Fly shared the award for Best Director in Comedy for Versus Valerie. Kate Conway took home the award for Best Lead Actress in Drama for her role of Rose in Out With Dad. Finally, Aaron Tsang won Best Original Score for his composing skills in Pete Winning and the Pirates. According to a press release provided by Clutch creator Jonathan Robbins, the awards came at the perfect time. "We are developing a feature film continuation of Clutch that will star Jillian,” writes Robbins, “so having both of us receive this honour will certainly strengthen our proof of concept for that.” This film, Hookers With a Vengeance, “will serve as a standalone story but also transmedia to the web series, and hopefully lead to a third season.” The Press Pass will keep all Clutch fans updated on these exciting projects.

As for Conway’s well-earned award, this is the second time she’s won an ISA for her role as Rose in Out With Dad. She also won Best Lead Actress in Drama in 2012, and the second win left Conway stunned. "Look up everyone involved with Out With Dad and work with them," says Conway, "it will be the best thing you ever do." Previously known as Indie Soap Awards, the ISAs is the top awards show for web series in North America. According to their website, ‘the ISAs celebrate the best in independently produced, scripted entertainment created for the web.’ Out of the original 56 nominations, 23 of them were Canadian. For a full list of nominations can be found here, the list includes Out With Dad, Clutch, Versus Valerie, Pete Winning, LESlieVILLE, and Gay Nerds. The full list of winners from ISA5 can be found here.